Automatic Litterbox Central

Glad to hear you took her to the vet. The only time I have ever had my cats go outside the box, something was wrong. In both cases, a bladder infection. So it's good to check. Per all the vets I've had the pleasure to hear from, animals like keeping habits. When they change their behavior, something is wrong and that's their only way to tell us. If it's health, I sure hope it's something simple. I will be calling my vet tommorrow to schedule my cat. I have a feeling she's going to need some teeth pulled. She had a few pulled a few years back. As of late, she started leaving a lot of pieces of food outside her bowl. She eats dry so I'm thinking the sudden change might be because the food is too firm and it hurts her to bite down on it. When she recovered from her dental work a few years back, they told me moisten her dry food with water to soften it so she wouldn't have any trouble eating. So I tried that trick and she'll eat the soft kibble but not the regular. And no mess....not one crumb is left behind. That tells me something is up. And I have a feeling it's going to be my vet bill!

I was wondering if you had an update on your situation and I have a recommendation for getting the smell out. I had recommended in another post to someone to try pine sol. I don't know how it will work in carpet. But I had a very sick cat years ago that would pee and poop all over my laundry and floors. I ended up replacing the carpeting and killzing the floor because the smell was so bad. Apparently it had a favorite spot under my son's bed that I was not aware of and when I realized it the mess had to be cut out as there was no way to clean it out. Anyway... I used a little bit of pine sol in my laundry and it completely neutralized the smell. I would say try that on the samples of carpet you said you have and see if it works. I can't see why it would affect the color, but you never know. Goos luck with your situation!

Yes! There is an update....an expensive one. After having the carpet professionally treated and cleaned, Duck STILL peed all over the area. The vet suspects she has anxiety since the Valium was a temporary fix, and put her on Kitty Prozac. When we blacklighted the area she peed in, we were astonished to find how much there was. We had an estimate of how much it would cost to replace just that area of carpet, and to have it patched would cost $700 and it wouldn't look right, the carpet wouldn't quite match (the whole basement is about 1400 square feet of carpet, we couldn't replace it all. So, we had no choice but to rip out the carpet in about a 200 square foot area and are in the process of putting down engineered hardwood ourselves.

We also decided to replace the baseboard where she peed, and when my husband put the crowbar next to the drywall to pull it out, the crowbar sank into the drywall like it was butter! We ended up cutting about 14" by 2 feet out of two places in the wall, and the stench was outrageous!! When we pulled the carpet, we noticed several very OLD stains on the subfloor and began to suspect something. Sure enough, we've found out from our neighbors that the previous owners had a Husky they "forgot" to mention to us, and it's pretty clear it peed in the basement and they didn't disclose that. No WONDER Duck has been peeing there, she could smell the old dog pee!

So, $1,400 later, we will have a new floor down there, clean drywall and baseboard, and everything's been treated with a odor blocking primer. I really hope this is the solution to the Mysterious Peeing Duck.......
thanks for your interest everyone!!

I've followed this story with bated breath - what happened next? Has Duck stopped her peeing in this place? It sounds as if it may have done the trick. My problem is similar but I don't think there's any solution, unless anyone can think of something else to try.

My cat uses the toilet - I trained her with Litter Quitter, but this problem goes back to when she used a litter tray and so it's really got nothing to do with that. When I first got her a year ago she was very nervous and hid behind the sofa for 3 days. That's when she started peeing on the sofa, and then much later also peeing on the bed. It's definitely a behavioural thing - she's been checked out by the vet.

What I do is, I keep the sofa covered with an incontinence sheet and an easily washable throw over it. I also put a sheet of hardboard on the seat area at night and whenever I'm not sitting on it. This works fine, except for the times I forget to put the hardboard back when I get up from the sofa. Sometimes I've caught her about to go - I shout NO NO (or something similar) and she jumps off immediately and trots off to the toilet. So she knows, yet she still does it. WHY? And of course sometimes I catch her but it's too late. I wash all the covers immediately with Bio stuff so it can't be the smell - I'm convinced it's the place that's become fixed in her brain as an OK place to go. Weeing on the bed is far worse and the only solution is to ban her from the room altogether which makes me really sad as I love sleeping with her. It breaks my heart to hear her scratching and crying to come in. Incidentally, I have tried citrus and Olbas oil as a deterrent but to no avail.

What I'm hoping is that by physically making it impossible for her to go in these places it will eventually become wiped from her memory. Is this how it works? But what else can I do?

She doesn't go anywhere else, just the bed and the sofa. I've never had this problem before with cats - they've always made the transition from litter tray to going outside with no problem at all. I feel as if my child has been diagnosed as having an incurable disability - what can I do, send her back? I love her. Has anybody got any ideas for anything else I can try?